One Wish
by ILoveCillian91
Summary: If you could have one wish, any wish at all, what would you wish for? [oneshot]ShannonPOV


One Wish

By Lindsay

If you could have one wish, any wish at all, what would you wish for?

The first time I ever heard that question was when I was eight years old, and my father was getting married to Sabrina Carlyle.

I was all ready in my little pink flower girl outfit, with my face covered in dainty makeup and my hair done up in a small bun. I hadn't wanted to be flower girl at all, but Sabrina had insisted that it would be "just darling", so here I was.

Just before the wedding was about to start, my father pulled me aside and looked down at me with an adoring, loving look that I had become very familiar and comfortable with. For most of my life, that look had been for me and me alone, and no one else had ever received it from him. And then along came Sabrina, and I noticed my father had started to give her that look. The one that was once for me and me alone.

"Shannon, sweetheart," said my father, tightening the bow in my hair. "If you could have one wish, any wish at all, what would you wish for?"

At the age of eight, I had a million answers to that question. I would wish for a pony, for a puppy, for a thousand chocolate milkshakes. I would wish that Sam, my hamster hadn't died just a month before. I would wish for all the prettiest dresses in the world, because even at the age of eight, I still took great pride in my appearance.

It wasn't until years later that I finally understood why my father had asked me that question, and why at that time.

My father had seen his marriage to Sabrina as the opening of a new door for himself and me. He had thought that now that we were starting down a new road, he could make all of my wildest dreams come true.

I thought of that question more and more as I got older. I could never really decide on one thing, and my answer to the question was constantly changing.

Soon after the wedding, I found myself wishing that my father had never married Sabrina Carlyle. As a matter of fact, I wished they had never even met. I soon accepted that she hated me and she accepted that I hated her just the same, but that didn't mean that I had to be happy about it.

It wasn't just Sabrina either, I knew that Boone, her son, was in love with me from the minute we met. The instant he saw me, his bright blue eyes lit up like Christmas tree lights and his cheeks turned bright red. He gave me a shy look, and when he introduced himself he stumbled over his words a bit.

It would have been funny, if it didn't happen to me so often already. Lot of boys at school looked at me the same way, so it was nothing new to me. Not that I would ever tire of it. However, Boone was going to be my brother, and even though I was young, I knew that a boy being in love with his sister was gross.

It wasn't until I entered Junior High that I began to enjoy his obvious love for me. Not that I felt anything for him back, but I loved the fact that he adored me and worshipped me. He certainly wasn't the only one, but the loads of brainless boys who gawked at me over their textbooks would eventually have their eyes caught by other girls. Boone would always be in love with me. I knew it. Somewhere deep down, I knew that he would always yearn for me.

It also wasn't until I entered Junior High that my hair turned dark. Ugh. However, with my immense popularity, being a natural blonde was probably the most significant thing I had to wish for in Junior High. Dyeing my hair wasn't that much of a hassle.

Actually, I did have one more thing I would wish for. To stay skinny without making myself throw up. Ick.

One day, when I was thirteen and Boone was fifteen, I decided to ask him the big question.

We had just fought over what to watch on TV, a battle that I won, as usual. By then I had learned how to use him to get what I wanted, but I had yet to begin to use his love for me to accomplish bigger issues than who got the TV remote.

I was smirking evilly while watching his sullen pouting out of the corner of my eye, and it just came out.

"Boone, if you could have one wish, any wish at all, what would you wish for?"

He paused for a beat.

"You mean besides having you stop being a selfish bitch?"

My smirk widened.

"Yeah, besides that."  
He thought for another moment, then answered, "World peace."

I rolled my eyes and turned my attention back to the TV as the show came back from commercial break.

That was Boone for you.

People say that high school is tough, but for me it couldn't have been better. I was skinny, beautiful, and popular. What more could I have to wish for?

Well, everything was great until my senior year, that is. By then, I had slept with the boyfriends of enough girls for my slut reputation to be pretty much cemented. At that point, if I could wish for one thing, I would have wished for all those stupid bitches to die. Screw them, they all just wished they were me. When they cried about how their boyfriends left them for me, they all just wished they were as hot as me. When they gossiped about who I slept with at the last party, they all just wished it had been them in bed with the football captain. When they snarled and shot death glares as I flirted with the boys they were crushing on, they all just wished they were bold and seductive like me.

When you think about it, it sounds like they would want that one wish more than I would, just to wish that I had never been born. It was a comfort to know that they hated me as much as I hated them.

Boone's obsession with me proved to be more and more useful over the years. No matter where I was or what kind of situation I was in, all it took was one tear-filled phone call and he would come running to my rescue.

There were other reasons that I loved the way he was crazy for me, but they were reasons that I pushed to the back of my mind and locked in a box that I only opened a mere crack at times when I let my mind wander. I couldn't help but admit to myself how gorgeous Boone was. He had gotten more attractive as the years went by, and it was getting harder for me to not take advantage of his crush on me. After all, it's not like he would have turned me down.

No. There was no way. I was Shannon Rutherford. I could have any guy I wanted. I was absolutely not going to do anything with my stepbrother.

It was years before he finally figured out that I was conning him out of money. As the look of revelation passed over his face and he glanced between my Aussie boyfriend, Brian, and me I saw a deep pain in his eyes. His eyes spoke directly to my heart, saying, "How could you do this to me?"

I didn't have an answer to that question.

However, I found myself asking that question just later that night when Brian took the money and took off, leaving me in the dust. After hitting a bar and drowning in my self pity over some vodka, I shot one last "piss off" look to the flirty young bartender and headed to Boone's hotel room. I had nowhere else to turn.

I am Shannon Rutherford. I can have any guy I want.

I had been telling myself this my whole life, but that night, in my drug induced haze, I found myself thinking something else as Boone opened the door to his hotel room.

If I want Boone, I'm going to have him.

So I took him.

I sometimes wonder, when Boone sat sadly on the edge of the bed after our sexual fling, his heart broke, would he have still used his one wish for world peace? If he had one wish, would he have still rather had peace on earth than me, and the mending of his broken heart? I may never know.

At any point in my life since I first heard the question, if anybody told me, "You know that question that you're always thinking about? The one about what you would wish for if you had one wish? Well eventually your answer to that question is going to be 'a rescue boat'" I would have told them that they were insane.

But, as soon as we crashed on that God-forsaken island, a rescue boat would have been a dream come true.

There were certainly other things I wished for on the island. There were days where I wished I could have a nice hot shower, or some new clothes. Then there were days when I would use my one wish a thousand times just for a bar of chocolate or a diet coke.

But in a choice between any of those things and a rescue boat, I would still go with the rescue boat.

Then there was Sayid. He was rugged, handsome, and perfectly capable of fulfilling my every want and need. He wasn't nearly as gorgeous as Boone, but Boone was still my brother. Besides, after seducing him in Sydney, I needed to convince him that he was nothing more to me than a fly buzzing around my head.

So I went after Sayid. I didn't actually care about him all that much, but it still pissed me off when Boone tried to get in the way of our dance of attraction. If I wanted Sayid, I was going to have Sayid, and there was nothing that Boone could do about it.

He turned out to be absolutely perfect for me. He treated me like a princess and gave me absolutely everything I could ever want. He was passionate, protective, and surprisingly romantic when he wanted to be. It even amazed me how moved I was when he did simple things like bring me a flower he had found out in the jungle. If anybody else had fed me the one-liners and poetry that Sayid seemed to enjoy serenading me with, I would have rolled my eyes and called them desperate. But with Sayid, it just seemed so genuine.

So, being with Sayid was pretty amazing. Still, I couldn't help but feel that something was missing. There was something in my heart that I felt for one man and one man alone…but I wasn't going to think about that. I was confident that, after enough time with Sayid, my feelings for him would be buried.

What I really loved about Sayid was the way he would surprise me. I'd never really been a big fan or surprises, especially after my father decided to "surprise" me with his engagement to Sabrina. Despite this, when Sayid led me off to a secluded part of the beach where he had set up a picnic for us, my heart just swelled.

I figured that was what I had been missing in all my other relationships: tenderness. Sayid really cared for me, unlike most of the other guys I'd been with. In fact, Boone was the only sweet guy I had ever been close to before Sayid.

As we headed back to camp early the next morning, I thought I could really get used to this. Perhaps it was the way it was meant to be.

When we neared camp, I noticed a group of survivors all crowded around something. They all seemed happy and pleased. I noticed vaguely that Boone wasn't among them, but he was probably off sulking somewhere about me going off with Sayid.

Then Jack was coming towards us, and he wasn't smiling.

"Shannon," he said as we stopped in front of each other. "There's…there's been an accident.

"Oh?" I responded, trying my best to sound nonchalant, but my mouth had gone dry.

"It's Boone. He's…he's dead."

My heart shattered.

I dropped Sayid's hand and took a step back.

No. No no no no no. He couldn't. I needed him.

"Where is he?"

"Shannon…" Jack began.

"Where is he?" I pressed, my voice almost to a shriek.

"The caves," Jack whispered.

Sayid called after me, but I had already taken off at a sprint.

When I laid eyes on his body, it felt as though my heart were breaking all over again. I had nothing left. Boone was the only man I had ever truly loved.

I knelt beside him and touched his face.

It was cold.

The tears tumbled from my eyes, falling onto Boone's face and running down his cheeks as though he himself were crying them.

If I could have one wish, any wish at all, I wouldn't wish for a rescue boat to come. I wouldn't wish for the perfect life. I wouldn't even wish to mend my broken heart. I would wish for Boone to be alive again.


End file.
